Where Honor's head lay upon her pillow by night, a distance of scarcely one yard separated it from the famous cherry tree of Endicott's. This year, owing to a prevalence of cold wind, the crop, though excellent, had been unusually late, and it happened that the thrushes and blackbirds paid exceptional attention to the fruit. Once, in a moment of annoyance at sight of her shining berries mutilated by sharp bills, and pecked to the purple-stained stones, Honor had issued an impatient mandate to the first servant who chanced to meet her after discovery of the birds' theft. Henry Collins it was, and his round eyes grew into dark moons as she bid him shoot a few of the robbers and hang their corpses Haman-high as a dreadful lesson to the rest.
For a fortnight after this stern decree Collins, full of private anxieties, paid no heed to his mistress's command, and Honor herself dismissed the matter and forgot her order as completely as she forgot those moments of irritation that were responsible for it; but anon Henry recollected the circumstance, borrowed Jonah Cramphorn's gun, rose betimes, and marched into the garden on a morning soon after the rainstorm. A flutter of wings in the cherry tree attracted him, and firing against the side of the house he brought down a fine cock blackbird in a huddled heap of ebony feathers now streaked with crimson, his orange bill all stained with juice from the last cherry that he would spoil. The shot echoed and re-echoed through the grey stillness of dawn, and Myles, already rising, hastened to the window, while Honor opened her eyes, for the report had roused her.
"It's Collins!" exclaimed her husband, staring into the dusk of day; "and the brute has shot a blackbird! Is he mad? How did he dare to come into the private garden with his gun? And now you'll most probably have a headache—being startled out of sleep like that. Besides, the cruelty of it."
"What a storm in a teacup, my dear! The man is only doing as I ordered him. The birds are a nuisance. They've eaten all my cherries again this year. I bid Collins thin them a little."
"You told him to shoot them? Honor!"
"Oh, don't put on that Sunday-school-story look, my dearest and best. There are plenty of blackbirds and thrushes. The garden is still my province, at any rate."
"The birds do more good than harm, and, really, a handful of sour cherries——"
"They're not sour!" she cried passionately, flaming over a trifle and glad of any excuse to enjoy an emotion almost forgotten. "My father loved them; my great-grandfather set the tree there. It's a sacred thing to me, and I'll have every bird that settles in it shot, if I please."
"Honor!"
"And hung up afterwards to frighten the rest."